


When the Levee Breaks

by cenotaphy



Series: season 15 fix-its [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Coda, Crying, Dean Winchester Has Self-Esteem Issues, Dean Winchester is Bad at Feelings, Dean and C- Coping Mechanisms, Dean and alcohol, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Fix-It, Full Body Hugging, Hugs, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Post-Finale, Season/Series 15, The Empty (Supernatural), so much crying, this is mostly just Dean being a total wreck but then a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27431200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: It takes time for the levee to break, of course.Dean takes everything that happened and he pushes it down, and he pushes it down, and he keeps moving, because if he doesn't he'll drown.Coda/fix-it for 15.18 "Despair".
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: season 15 fix-its [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006809
Comments: 111
Kudos: 1329





	When the Levee Breaks

It takes _time_ for the levee to break, of course.

Dean takes everything that happened and he pushes it down, and _he pushes it down_ , and he keeps moving, because if he doesn't he'll drown.

For forty-eight hours after—after Cas, after he— _after_ , things are moving so fast that he doesn't even have time to peel back the numbness. He sees, on Jack's and Sam's faces, the same blank expressions of exhausted grief. But there's no time for any of it, not with a cosmic entity breathing down their necks and the entire world on a countdown clock to doomsday.

And then, suddenly, it's over. They win. They save the world, one more time. Chuck is gone, and everyone is back. Stumbling, gasping, startled. Alive.

Charlie, Stevie, Bobby, Donna. The other hunters. _Eileen_.

Almost everyone.

*

"I'm gonna turn in," says Dean, pushing himself up from the map room table. The empty beers from their muted celebration—more a bewildered, obligatory acknowledgement of their continued survival—are scattered across the glass. The atmosphere in the room is one of shell-shocked relief, cracked through with a sorrow that can't yet be put into words. Cas's usual chair sits empty.

Sam nods to him. Eileen, sitting next to Sam with her head pillowed on his shoulder, pulls a gentle half-smile. Her eyes are kind. Dean can't stand it.

Jack glances up at him but quickly drops his gaze again. He'd nearly died saving their collective asses in the final battle. His arms are bandaged from the elbows down, burn wounds that he'll have to heal the ordinary, human way. Dean digs deep and musters up a flicker of energy from the crater in his chest. He touches Jack's shoulder gently. "You did good today, kid."

Jack looks up again, startled, but Dean is already turning away, snagging a glass and a bottle of whiskey on his way out of the room.

*

He kicks his bedroom door shut behind him and looks down at the glass in his hand for a moment. Then he throws it across the room. It shatters against the wall and maybe Sam will hear and come running and maybe he won't. Dean locks the door, just in case. Then he unscrews the cap on the whiskey and lifts it to his mouth and drinks, huge burning gulps that sear his throat and curdle in his stomach. He drinks and drinks and it isn't until a third of the bottle is gone that he finally lowers it and realizes his face is wet and his hands are shaking.

He's running out of time, he thinks. He's running out of time because the relief and the numbness are splintering and if he isn't blitzed out of his mind by the time those walls come down there'll be nothing to keep him from feeling every razor edge of the chasm he's teetering over.

He takes another swig of the whiskey. Christ, he's tired. He's so fucking _tired_. Anger bubbles up out of nowhere, tar-heavy and burning hotter than the liquor. It feels familiar and safe and _easy_ and he leans into it.

"Why'd you do it, Cas?" he says to the room at large. His voice cracks. "God fucking damn you." It strikes him that there's no God to damn anyone anymore and a strangled laugh catches in his throat. He sets the bottle on the edge of the desk. And then, because the razors are tearing at his skin, at his chest, at his heart, he picks up the chair and launches it in the direction of the whiskey glass.

It clatters against the wall and there's no way Sam didn't hear that, but Dean doesn't care. Sammy's a smart kid and he can figure out when he should leave damn well enough alone. Dean sweeps through the room and smashes everything he can lay hands on—yanks the drawers out of his dresser and hurls them against the wall, sweeps the spare knives off the table with one outstretched arm, tips the nightstand over and sends books and papers flying. None of it matters, nothing matters anymore, what Cas said doesn't even matter because he just _said it_ and _left_.

He ends up doubled over, leaning against the wall for support, wheezing and gasping like Billie's still magically crushing his heart in a telekinetic fist. He's making an awful sound, a horrible ragged rhythmic noise that tears its way out of his chest and flays his throat on its way out.

Dean slides slowly down the wall. He must look like a child afraid of a storm, huddled in a corner with his head in his arms.

 _How could you_ , he thinks. He means, _how could you say that_. He means, _how could you leave_. He means, _how could you make me watch you die_.

He means, _how could you stand there and tell me I was a good man, after everything I've done_.

"Cas," he chokes out. His eyes burn. "How could you know."

_It's something I know I can't have._

"You _didn't_ know," Dean whispers into the quiet, to no one at all. "You never asked. You never asked. You _didn't know_."

_The one thing I want—_

Dean cries. He hammers his fist against the wall until he feels his knuckles split and he cries angry, messy tears, because he didn't know either, but maybe it's something he could've figured out, and now he never will.

"Stop _bawling_."

Dean looks up and his brain short-circuits. Cas is crouched next to him, his head cocked in that birdlike way, his hands resting on his knees.

"You're—" Dean's losing his mind, he knows he is. He almost welcomes it. "You're not him."

The thing shaped like Cas laughs mirthlessly. "No," it says, and the voice is Cas's voice and yet it's wrong, it's all _wrong_ —"no, I'm really not."

"You—you can't," Dean says hoarsely. He blinks away a blurry film of tears. "You can't come to Earth without being summoned."

The Empty puts a hand against his face and this, too, is a mockery of a movement Cas would make. It slides a rough palm up Dean's cheek, into his hair, and curls its fingers through so that it can jerk Dean's head back.

"And what exactly," it snarls, "do you think you're doing now?"

Dean's hands are still shaking; bile rises in his throat. His head is swimming from the whiskey and he doesn't _understand_. "I—I'm not trying to summon you—"

The Empty shakes him by his hair, so that his teeth rattle together. "The two of you," it hisses, "are _so_. _Very_. _Loud_. All of the _longing_ and the _grief_. It is disgusting, it is _deafening_ , and I am _tired_."

"Then give him back," Dean blurts. He reaches up to catch the thing's wrists. "Please." He'll beg—he doesn't give a fuck. " _Please_. Please, please, give him back, I'll—whatever you want—"

"I really don't care what you have to bargain with," says the Empty in that awful parody of Cas's voice. "I should kill you right now. But as it happens, _Castiel_ "—it spits the word out like poison—"and I have reached an agreement. _Another_ agreement."

"Wh-what agreement?"

"The nephilim's attack damaged me." The Empty lets go of Dean's hair to wrap its arms around itself, its voice dropping to a low mutter. "Cracks in the foundation, cracks in the foundation." It cocks its head again and grins. "But angel grace, even weakened grace? Useful for repairs."

Fear spikes through Dean. "What did...what did you..."

"Interesting thing about humans," muses the Empty. "They go somewhere _else_ when they die, don't they?" It curls a hand into Dean's shirt and drags him close. "I don't ever want to see either of you _ever again_."

Glistening black tar flows suddenly from its eyes and mouth. Dean jerks back in shock, watches as the dark metallic substance flows like water into the shadows where the wall meets the floor, seeping away as if it were never there at all.

The hand in his shirt slackens. He looks back and—

"Dean," says Castiel hoarsely, and it's him, it's so utterly and entirely _him_ —

"Cas—" Dean stutters, and his brain doesn't seem to have the capability to articulate any additional phrases to follow. He's still crying, he registers dimly. He thinks he might not have stopped crying since he shut the bedroom door.

"Dean, I—"

Dean drags Cas into him. He doesn't think about it, doesn't decide to do it—his arms move almost of their own accord, reacting to something deeper than any coherent thought he might be able to scrape together.

He pulls Cas close, closer, as close as he can, tipping them both over into a slumped tangle of limbs on the floor. He buries his face in the hollow of Cas's shoulder, inhales the smell of him, the warmth of him. His whole body is shaking like he's in the first stage of hypothermia and he can't _stop crying_. He's saying words, too many words and too fast, but he doesn't know what they are, can't make sense of the garbled fragments his own mouth is trying to drag into shape.

Cas's arms tighten around Dean's shoulders and this only makes Dean tremble harder. He feels raw, flayed open in a way not even Alastair ever managed. His breath is coming in huge, ragged gasps.

"It's alright," Cas is saying. One of his hands comes up to rest, almost hesitantly, against Dean's hair. It's achingly different from when the Empty mimicked the gesture just minutes before. "It's alright, Dean."

"How could you say you knew," Dean says wildly, through his tears. "How could you know, Cas. You _don't_ know, you don't know how I—"

Cas stills.

"You don't think you've changed me too?" Dean says. He clenches his fists into Cas's coat. His face is still tucked into Cas's collar and he knows this is the only way he's going to be able to say any of this, the only way he can drag this out of his stupid stubborn chest. "You don't think I need you? You don't think I—"

"Dean, I'm human now," Cas mumbles. "You don't need—"

"I don't care," Dean gasps. "I love you. I love you." Weight lifts from his chest and if he weren't already crying he might sob from the relief of it. "You fucking asshole. I love you."

Cas makes a muffled, unintelligible sound. Dean can feel his stubble against the side of his face. He can feel Cas's breath against his neck, warm and unsteady. He can feel Cas's heartbeat.

Cas's grip loosens and Dean feels his breath hitch abruptly. He's terrified, suddenly—afraid to open his arms, unclench his hands from Cas's coat. Afraid that this is some dream or memory or delusion. That if he lets go, Cas will vanish, smoke and memories on the wind. And Dean will be left, again.

Cas is human, so he can't read thoughts, or hear prayers, not anymore. But maybe he knows Dean well enough to guess, anyway.

Because he says, warmly, quietly, "I'm not leaving you." And he doesn't let go.

**Author's Note:**

> EXTREMELY quick and rough coda I hammered out after watching the episode, as a way to try to become a person again instead of a shattered emotional husk. Comments/reactions are always welcome & adored!! T_T (As well as any thoughts/feels from the episode so that I know I'm not the only one dying over here <3 )


End file.
